


A Moment of Reflection

by MissDragonSpire



Category: Original Work, The Void RP Canon
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Dark subject matter, Drama, Emotional Manipulation, Fighting, Gen, Implied abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Mild Language, One on One Battle, Self-Hatred, Self-Reflection, Self-Worth, Slice of Life, The Darkness Inside You, Therapy, depictions of blood, descriptions of trauma, mentions of family death, mild depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22427773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDragonSpire/pseuds/MissDragonSpire
Summary: Clementine has always considered herself broken. Obsessed. Isolated. Feral. Worthless. Beyond any form of repair. Words of encouragement have carried her only so far. So it's time for more. It's time for reflection. And she's not taking this climb alone anymore.(Updated weekly) (Tags and rating will be updated as needed)
Kudos: 5





	1. Week I

**Author's Note:**

> This series does not depict the accuracy of a real-life therapist or the sessions within psychology. I wrote this series for fun, and to explore the hidden depths of one of my favorite original characters. Please take the elements of the sessions as a presumptive case in real-life therapy.

I was escorted into my hour of hell via portal, and then via door that shut behind me. The last I saw of Stabby was him laying outside, sleepy eye peered at me. He was right off to guarding. Me, of course, that I wouldn't run again. I gave him an adventure last night, and he was too tired to go for another spin. 

We were in a white room. All white, splash of color a cryptid. The walls went far, unfurnished in every corner except the one I took up space in. In mine were two chairs, a knee-high wooden table with not a paper nor glass upon it, and a bookcase, of course barren. I was the sole planet of color in this lonely galaxy, and I myself was pale. A window looked out to a bricked-in garden.

There was a grinding sound, a clearing of the throat, from the further chair. I said "we", didn't I?

A tiny bit more color than myself was found in the corn hair of the person nearly swallowed by the maw that people usually called a cushion. They looked not much older than me, eye wrinkles not counted. Their hair was slicked back and contained in a bob, and in their lap sat a toy resembling a dog. They stroked its ears as though real.

So appears the enemy of my private thoughts.

"Clementine, I believe?" They showed all teeth in what might have been to dumb children a welcoming smile. "Please, please, have a seat and we will start."

I stayed put. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I looked out the window. Nothing was happening. Nothing. A bird was perching, but its open beak brought no sound. No one was here but myself, this stranger, and a silent bird.

My palms felt slick. Silence wasn't good.

It must have been good for humans, but for us shadow spirits, silence meant danger. Something was always wrong when the birds stopped singing and the squirrels were in hiding from something much larger than people. Songs and chattering had no place here.

"Clementine?" the person spoke up. And slower, "Please. Please come sit."

I did not want to sit. A ringing started screeching in my ears, the quiet too quiet. I wanted to get out, back into the woods where wind and birdsong was natural.

But if I left, I knew, I'd have an even less desirable talk ahead of me. 

Stabby had not asked for much. He had asked for a pearl compared to the diamond I was making my situation out to be.

"For me." Stabby told me to try for him. Not even a demand, but a plea.

The sweat on my hands wasn't getting any drier. Stabby wanted me to be helped. That was the only reason I got dragged here. There had to be something good from this.

But no matter what they said or expected me to say, these thoughts were mine. Mine. I did not have to say anything I didn't want to. 

I plopped into the vacant seat. It hissed under my weight, and things like pill bugs shifted about. Soft but weird. 

Another cough of refreshing the throat, and the therapist spoke. "So how are you? I know the first session can be... unsettling." They, like myself, on sync, took a gander at the room, noting its lack of identity. Like walking into an empty, hollow, solid eggshell.

I answered, "I'm fine." 

"Really?" they said.

"Yes," I said. "Dandy."

"I see," they said. Their eyes - our chairs were three feet apart - went over my shirt. "I take it coming by was an eventful afternoon?"

I squished the urge to cross my arms. Oh, that thing about being dragged here? I wasn't being clever with idioms. "Yep. Fun."

"Well," the therapist hummed, "I can promise this is a safe space. You were made aware of the boundaries, yes?" 

"Not legally allowed to share my secrets. Nothing I say leaves this room."

"Then you have nothing to fear," they assured.

"Mmhm." I poked at one of the pill bug things inside the chair.

That bird was hopping on the sill now. It pecked vainly at a pudgy catterpillar climbing the glass, just out of reach. Somewhere else, a clock was ticking, taunting me.

"Do I guess correctly to say you know why you're here?" The therapist initiated a stare down. Not very effective with round eyes and crinkles. A set of icy blue ones would have done more, but hers were brown like an old dog's. 

Ah, now the toy made sense.

"I bet," I said.

"And..." They tapped a manicured nail. Guess what color. _Thip-thip_ -ing was the sound off whatever filled the chair.

I continued, "And I'm supposed to talk until I magically feel better."

"Not magic," they countered. "Intellectual observations which ultimately lead to medication or solid advice."

"Joy." Because getting pumped with potions for years and years to get one shred of happiness was a valid answer. I had seen the effect of a long term use, and it was not in any shape a desirable future. The shiver contained itself to my fingers.

"And a part of talking is saying more than idle chatter. Do you think so, Clementine?"

I didn't miss the passive aggressive tone. I wasn't trying.

Time was being wasted. Nothing was going to improve in me. In me, there was a monster, and even if I wanted to tear it out, bear it before this miracle brain healer, what they would see is what I really am. I kept my answers short and reserved because there was nothing to say. Time and money were being wasted. I was wasting it. Stabby was giving away his time and money for a pile of trash in form of a person. 

The therapist was talking again. "I call this little guy Cadet." They picked up the dog. Now that it wasn't wedged between their leg and the chair arm, I could see the tiny smile that read content, the floppy ears covering part of its blue button eyes and a patch that ran between the eyes, spicing its tan face. "I take him with me to some sessions. Not all, but some; learned the hard way, yes, to not have him around the volatile clients." That patch went straight down the back. "I almost left him home today."

I tilted my head. "I'm not volatile?"

"No, no." They tucked the toy in between their knees. "Are you?"

I had to consider, since there was a reason my only friend was a rabbit. "I don't want to be."

"Oh. Then it might be best that you don't have him for the five minute break time."

"Break time?"

"The kid clients get antsy if they go a whole hour straight." They hugged the toy tightly, as though a kid themselves. "Five minutes of play do wonders for the mind."

Play.

Such an adverse word on the tongue. Kid me had so much more to worry about than having fun. Like being useful. Or staying out of the way. Both.

The therapist added, "Sometimes my older clients will accept a break of their own. He's simple, far from the way exchanged words can become convoluted. But, ah, mainly, Cadet exists so I can prepare myself for each session. He's a comforter."

"What does that make me?" I wringed my hands. My head drooped. This felt familiar.

"Pardon?"

The gossip among spirits who, once knowing the wolf is not at the door, cackle freely.

The hard drink so to forget for a few hours.

The hug or cheek pecks in wishes of good luck.

There were plenty of coping mechanisms to putting up with someone like me. An undesirable person, needed too much to discard like the usual trash. Was I a problem to be fixed for everybody else?

The therapist must have looked right through me. "No, no. You are not the one I need comfort against."

I wriggled in the seat, looking back to them.

"I have quite a few clients to work with, Clementine. Not only you." They pinned me with their stare. "And none of them like one another. These sessions, like every day of my life before me, are going to progress in ways I cannot see. Yes, yes, they could end badly with my day sour as a sunbaked egg, but I view the silence before the talking, my soft, squishy Cadet in my hands, as a moment of reflection. My routine. A reminder that I am in control of myself. Exactly the same as you are in control of yourself. You are not the enemy of my peace."

All of this without blinking. I noticed their dog eyes were less dog and more bird - sharp, wise in spite of head cocking (which in the slightest degree they were, in fact, doing) and mating dances.

Propping their knee upon the other, Cadet on the higher, they perched here like this is where they always had belonged. As natural as a name that fits the looks of a person. They were meant to be here to guide idiots like myself out of whatever trash pile they had built so they could have some semblance of an existence set right.

Looking at myself, I had to wonder: how much trash was too much for one person, their own life to maintain, too, to wash away?

They were waiting.

Any answer at all.

The only one I could grasp for left me as a rasp. "Control of myself is all I could want. I start to improve, but the monster takes over. I get worse, and I drive people even further away. I should-"

I clapped my hands over my mouth.

Far more than I meant to say.

It gushed. Right after those first words I lost that control I desperately wanted. 

My eyeballs felt hot, tears pricking the corners.

"Ah, there." The therapist put their leg down. "No need, no need. That little bit is enough." They leaned forward, getting out of the chair with some effort, to pat my shoulder. I might have flinched, but I simply didn't have it in me. My concern was nailed into keeping my face dry. A few blinks and a few forced breaths, allowed in patient silence the room for them, and the urge sank. I wasn't going to cry today.

"Let us call it here," my therapist decided, "and we will progress some more next week. If-" and they flashed their all-consuming, not at all toothy smile "-if I have not scared you off." Their eyebrows shot up.

I felt a shrug was the most appropriate answer. "We'll see."

"Hard maybe, hard maybe," they said, bobbing their head. "Understood. I will walk you out."

They helped me out of the devouring chair (my new nickname for such horrible things) and went to the door. Stabby wasn't there. The exit portal we had used was, however.

Must have had to check on his other charge, since he did have a life outside of me. I did not mind coming home by myself.

"Until next time, Clementine."

I nodded, taking the first step through the portal. "'bye."

So, this wasn't the worst thing ever.

Stabby would still have to literally drag me back next week.


	2. Week II

She did not require Stabby to, literally, drag her back here.

When she came, she came with a clean vest, her dark hair kept in twin buns minus a few flyaways, and a small smile like she was ready to embrace the day. Really the evening, since it was dusk, but shhhhhh~

Hers was a spirit of hatching confidence. I couldn't be more proud. And I couldn't wait to see what more we discovered.

Perhaps we would.

We would have to see.

Stabby accompanied Clementine in, at least to the seating area. He is a bulky rabbit. Foot and a half tall if he sat up stiff, a splash of brown and black coloring the backside of his white fur. Like Clementine, his neutral expression softened. It overtook the salts, the licorices, the tars of emotion.

Like Clementine, these sessions were, indirectly, giving him something to live for.

I didn't have time to run any more than this through my head because he crashed into Clementine's calf mid-hop. The spirit had stopped short, taking a turn about. Her hands splayed in a questioning gesture before taking it to me.

"Yes?" So I changed the room a bit. Nothing to worry of.

I had noticed, on that first session, the girl was uncomfortable in the bean bag chairs - an otherwise big favorite of my child clients. Gone were they, and replaced by bar stools. Sturdy and encouraging of good posture. A record player sat in the corner behind me, already set to play instrumentals of Queen songs. "Don't Stop Me Now" intoxicated the air.

"Yes?" I asked again, and pat the vacant stool.

The spirit dropped her hands, tapping her thigh. Whatever it was she thought, she discarded it because she took her seat. Stabby nudged her foot, murmuring a request that she be good.

"Sure thing. Promise." She reached to pet his ears.

"Thanks, kid. I'll be right outside." Hopping away, he shut the door behind himself, deceptive size notwithstanding.

Now that we could start, I needed to voice my most vital question. "'Kid'?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't have to tell you anything I don't want to," she reminded.

"Fair enough, fair enough." I dropped it.

The spirit yawned, leaning back as far as the stool would allow. By the placement, hers was right by the window so she could see outside. The last of the sunlight soaked into her skin, sun-kissed like she were one of the warriors of Artemis. Her build spoke of the same. Showing bare arms up to the shoulders, her vest was of a snow leopard's fur, ending in its head as a hood. She also somehow managed to salvage the tail in the skinning. Three scars stretched across her left cheek.

Her race impressed me, all in all, the Shadow Spirits. Forest dwellers that may as well have been fae. Their interactions with the human world were next to none, and they resembled the mortal species excepting three qualities. These were that they grew horns or antlers atop their heads (Clementine was missing one of a deer's, and the other was chipped at the points), they possessed the ability to perform magic, any ability you could imagine, and their lifespan could reach the hundreds. Two, three hundred was the cap.

To take one out of the mystical and into the physical felt like a wonder. An opportunity of experience. I got to experience healing one of them to become her best self. 

She was watching me now. Waiting for me to start.

I cleared my throat. "So, how went your day?"

"Was fine," she said, sitting upright, and squirmed a bit. Cushions would have to be added next time. "I've been working on getting home cleaned up, planting new flower beds." She added, "Uprooting diseased trees."

A gardener like myself. My pride and joy - on the side of seeing clients, of course - was what Clementine observed in between statements.

"The forest hasn't seen healthy days in a long time." Her eyebrows bunched together. "More than a decade. Maybe two."

I said, "No time like now to turn things around."

"It's our fault. So a new beginning is exactly what is needed. For home and for me." She shrugged. 

"And," I said, "What kind of beginning are you reaching for? Has there been progress in it? And do you see the end goal coming to fruition in the near future?" 

"I..." She squeezed her knuckles. "I'm sorry, but could you turn that music down? Or off?"

The record was skipping at a guitar riff in "Bohemian Rhapsody", so I obliged.

As I did swapped vinyls out, Clementine gathered her answers. "It's new saplings we're planting. And we can't do anything about the plots until the snow clears. Farming can't start until we know the crops would survive. Years would pass before the sun sets on a revived land."

"But the beginning you are reaching for," I insisted. "The existence of your effort shows that hope survives. You're a leader who can bring her people out of despair." Switching the Queen with a record of natural birdsong, I returned to my client. "Don't you think?"

She shrugged. "I'm hoping for hope. Between Stabby's guidance and this book I'm following, I'm walking blind and in the dark. It's pure luck that's gotten me this far."

"I don't think so." Sheer luck, in this therapist's opinion, was a fantastical belief that relied on a fool's skill to have their money swindled, or to play the blame game, whose players were nothing but the physical elements that stacked toward an outcome, woeful or wonderful. "Is this book part of the new beginning you seek?"

"Sort of." She withdrew something from her vest. Crinkled and grey with a faded cover, it had earned its age in its use. "Someone gave this to me. Said he had done a lot of thinking this past decade." She leafed through the pages with slightly more reverence than your average bible.

When I asked, she passed it over. Many of the pages were blank. The few that were filled were crammed - a writer in fear of not all the book able to contain their thoughts if written at ease... or of someone dangerous finding them.

He was right to. The changes read of were big; to the stubborn, they were ambitious. To the tyrannical, defiant.

These pages read of trade between races, of the farms and forest restoration Clementine sought for. And there was the idea to add an ambassador (necessary if trade was ever to become a reality) and to swap things around, like the second in command serving not the leader, but a head of defense, who would be called General.

The one that especially jumped to the fore was changing the title of the leader. Always, it had been General - this book suggested the name of Chief instead.

When I handed it back, Clementine was wringing her knuckles again (I found later this was a normal nervous habit when she was deep in thought).

"You have many improvements ahead of you."

"Mm."

"You have nothing stored from this past year?"

She said, "No. The farming is a new idea. We had always relied on hunting and gathering what was already grown. But with the state of the forest..." She trailed off.

"I understand. I understand. It's time to do something that could heal, not destroy."

"Exactly."

I leaned forward, watching the spirit. "And what about this title change to Chief? Is that to be enacted, too?"

The spirit was silent. Her toe of one boot tapped at the heel of the other. The tap was like a drum beat to the songbird's current aria.

"Clementine? Chief Clementine?"

She snapped back to reality. "Please," she held up a hand. "Don't call me that."

"How come? Is that not one of these changes?"

"Being in the book doesn't mean I have to use it." Her glare softened. "Not for me. I plan to enact the title with the next to come. But 'General' is what suits me."

I took a push. "Why? A long time, an awfully long time to stay away from a mere title." The long life of a shadow spirit came to mind again.

Clementine must have been thinking the same. "Humans rarely break eighty. Plenty of time for them to screw themselves over in glorious ways. So you can guess the problem for a creature like one of us. We can have a long shadow at our feet if we take all the wrong turns." She tensed as though expecting me to point out the obvious wordplay. I was making no jokes in regards to a session. "When you hear of a chief, you think of... homeliness. Someone whom you can trust, whom you know stands for peace and fighting only to keep peace. Does that look anything like me?"

I had to confess to myself, no. Not to judge by outward appearances, but the scars, jagged, terrible, like a wild thing raked its claws across her face were one taint the judgment. And between her eyebrows, under her eyes, along the jawline, creases from a habit of scowling. Not in the least desirable in a chief like the one she described.

But at the same time, those were physical features of a person from before she chose, willingly, to come here. 

I chose to take a shot at my reasoning. "You're choosing to be known as General because you think this is the best you could ever be. And because it's associated with your past mistakes." Not seeking a confirmation, I kept going. Questions put a person on the spot, and if I was correct, being put on the spot was the core of this dilemma. "If you took up the title of Chief, you're giving yourself forgiveness you feel you've not earned. The defeatist in you says that forgiveness is out of bounds, that too little, too late has come barging in. The kind of shadow at your feet, it must be so large in so little time that a performance anxiety rules over your psyche." 

Clementine opened her mouth, trembling.

"Ah, ah." I touched her hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm not seeking confessions. There will always be time to explore that later. But," I sat back, "I feel you need to know, to feel as though you are under the scrutiny of your people - every movement, every word that goes past your lips - it is understandable. And it's valid to feel it's all there to be analyzed, judged, and put on a pedestal as another block on a structure meant for a great fall."

Clementine picked her legs up to the highest rung that she could get them to. Her mid-thirties couldn't match the young, weary face she had now, terrified of one tip to the wrong way and - as she put it best - screwing herself over in a glorious way.

Except there was no glorious way to go in the dark. Not one in which your only war was against your seething thoughts.

"But," I resumed. "But, I want you to remember you are in control. You always-" I stopped myself - telling her she had always been in control wouldn't help if she thought of her mistakes as negligence - and tried again. "You always have a choice. Maybe not of what comes. And certainly not of what has been. Truly, truly, unless you are a seer, there's little to be done there. But it's here - it's now, this freeze frame of us sitting in my office and speaking of choices and names - that you have all the control you could ever want."

I allowed her to speak. Even then she needed the time. "There's a million ways that I could fail."

"There's also a million ways that your friend won't let you," I noted. "Rely on him. Better yet, see yourself as deserving to do so. If you really didn't, you would have thrown that little book away the moment it was gifted to you."

Clementine got a distant look as that clicked.

If she did not agree, I decided, the least she was doing was considering it.

And that was enough.

I cleared my throat. "I do see one argument against such a title. 'Chief Clementine' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue."

She jumped from her stool and jabbed a finger at me. "See! You get it! It sounds clunky at best!"

"'Captain Clementine' could be something clever, if it were up to me," I drawled. 

I'm sure the subject would have carried on if my pager did not buzz at that moment. Session was over.

Leading Clementine to the door, I found Stabby was had fallen fast asleep at the foot of the door. Would have tripped if I were not used to it. The spirit woke him gently as she could, but he still jolted. 

"Anyways," she said. "Thank you. And see you next week?"

I nodded, but I was elsewhere. Else-time, actually.

Next week was a very good subject to think of. This one had been heavy; much I didn't know, and would have to unload in the future. My problem was that I got too eager, jumped straight into a root of this girl's demons. She was not volatile, but no part of me wanted to do something that would change this.

I made a choice. Next time would be simpler.

Like... visit to an old friend over tea and cakes simple.


	3. Week III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of this chapter's "lore" was inspired directly by Adventures With Anxiety by Nicky Case. It's a short web-game that's amusing and charming, deep, and free to play right now, and it nails a lot of poignant truths about anxiety. I highly recommend you give it a try, even if you don't necessarily have anxiety™.

I had decided on an earlier appointment, an afternoon walk in, this time. Too much to do tonight, and I was not up to sleep while weighed by another crying headache.

And at once I was greeted to a gears and screws tea party, music from the noise box - bird song if from a throat of copper - and a big smile from my Therapist that indicated it was certainly not a crumpet they were eating.

"'Kid'?" 

I don't know how in the seven levels of hell they found out.

I growled, "Better swallow what you're eating before you choke on your laughs." One astray potion poofing me into a literal blast from the past granted zero revisits to the subject in a session.

They tittered, a hand to their suger-glossed lips. "My preferred sugar is bonding and love anyways," they said after swallowing. "But anyways-" and they pat the seat next to them.

I obeyed and, as I did so, noted the room's change of the week. It was going to be a thing for each session, I decided. Nobody ever went from death white walls and silence to tinny bird chirps and the dusk sky splashed across at impulse's call.

Our stools had been updated with cushions, squishy like the devil chairs but cookie cutter small and round so there was no sinking. If somehow I did sink, never again would I misjudge a portal or rift's size. Silk curtains were halfway drawn over the garden window, basking us in a filtered light. It did well for the color of the room, like it wasn't a February afternoon and more of a June's evening. On this table of two glass sheets trapping toothy gears and flat, rust colored metal shapes resembling screws and bolts was an assortment of tiny cakes and cups that would have been found at a feast for guinea pigs. The plates that held the confectioneries resembled more of those gears taken out of a human's janky toys. 

"So," I started off, "you couldn't make up your mind?" I swung my feet in place, bumping a stool leg.

They had no halt to the flow. "You could say. I like change as often as a bird preens his feathers." They nudged one of the mousey cups. "You like raspberry tea?"

I brought the drink to my lips. Something wonderful, firecracker flavors and an enchanting warmth, steeped into me. My numb fingertips vented the chill and left behind the tingling of a pixie's touch.

"Thanks," I hummed. "But the walls must have taken a while."

"Oh goodness, don't remind me, that white gave the worst migraine," my Therapist said. A hand raised to their forehead, tension darkening their crinkles. "I say the darker the better. But not too dark. Seems counterproductive to what I had meant to avoid."

Having not noticed it before, I looked again and found bits of white goop - "spackle", I was later told - put in every few yards, a whip of stars at day's end. This, and the afternoon sunlight being but inches from my face, put me into the idea of standing on the world's edge, where two separate worlds existed in one vision.

I nodded my approval.

"Anything to please, Chief."

Chuckling stiffly, pushed for a subject change. My people knew now I would be known as that from here on out, but nothing changed about the awkward transition. "What's on the calender today? Talking about my hobbies? The weather? You going to put me in a kitchen and see how badly I perform under pressure?"

"Not unless you would like to do that last thing, but yes. I did think of merely talking. Not of idle things, since the amount of sarcasm you injected into your voice just now indicates a zilch level of enthusiasm. But no hyper-analyzing tricks, no fear of tears. Will that do?"

I could indeed do with that. "Talking is... yes, I'd like simple talking."

"Wonderful." And they motioned me to have the lead.

The problem with that was I was an easy conversationalist if, and only if, I built from another's words. A follower's mud pie talk was a thing compared to the leader's sandcastle speech.

So my intelligent input to a start was a big, "Um," and a stammer of, "I'm guessing by this-" I gestured around "-you like the night sky, too. It's lovely, capturing it in here, so..."

The Therapist side glanced me.

"That counts as small talk, doesn't it? Then never mind, we could discuss the- erm, the-"

Shushing, they said, "Little bit of small talk will not cause harm. Yes, I do. The life of a world intrigues me - certainly everything about a world, certainly its people - so a night sky aesthetic cinches my office's look. Though the dawn can be a worthy sight, too."

I didn't agree with that last bit. Night, for me, meant freedom. No shame of sloth after a long day if you did enough. All dawn did was remind of what had to be done, and so increase the burden by thought of it. Ask a prisoner on the day they are to die. In the heart of the forest, out of the touch of human civilization, the night's lifeblood pumped through the senses. 

It felt right to say, so I did.

"To each their own understandings," my Therapist answered. "And my understanding suggests something deeper; that you place value on yourself - and in general you value it - you equate your worth to productivity."

"I don't think that's it," I said. "There's no deep understanding. I just like the blues and blacks, and getting to kick back when appropriate." I downed the remaining portion of my tea, then scanned the mini cakes. Cute things - spongy, topped with sugar flowers, a bite-before-it's-gone type of size.

"You would be so surprised," my Therapist said, "the amount of study a human would commit to that sentence alone." Then they clucked, "Oh, you're out of tea, aren't you?" and put aside their own drained cup. "Jason!" they called.

A minute later and this... thing... it scurried in. Scurried, crawled, skidded, slid; it moved across the floor, a hum of an endless note coming with, and bumped into our stools (yes, it bumped once each) with a cutesy "Owchie!" The impression of a cookie cutter circle, like with the cushions, came back. A tray emerged from under its dot light eyes, offering three cups. 

It chirped, "Tea? Orange juice? Cocoa? Anything that's your pleasure, dearie! Ahu!"

"Don't mind the interface," my Therapist dismissed before I could ask. "I've been testing out my new assistant, and found so far he's determined above all else." They pointed to the orange juice, its stench as the Jason passed it via heightening itself stiff with flavor. I opted for another raspberry tea.

"Thanks," I murmured.

"T'was a pleasure, honey buns! Please pardon me." Away it scooted, the door closing behind it. Probably off to befuddle Stabby. 

"So," I asked. "Jason a part of that interior design updating?"

They answered, "Jason is his own element. A benefit to my office if it makes my clients feel more at home to speak freely." And like the sun had shattered, sudden as it, they jumped back to the original discussion I so trustfully thought had been dropped. "My understanding suggests deeper things when it comes to likes and dislikes. Such as last week, when I mentioned the possibility of your performance anxiety? Easily, this could be linked to your preference of twilight. Most people, they become sad at the end of a day. But not you. You find joy, but only if, by the high standards you set based on your upbringing, a quota is met. Otherwise, why relax?"

I went through my second cup much faster. But I decided against another refill; the warmth, now that I had no cold in me, felt like a furnace in my throat. And my fingers twitched, jittery. It distracted me well from answering.

They continued, undaunted, "I find that when it comes to the individual's anxiety, comparisons can be made with an animal. Any kind would do, as any kind can describe the individual." Only when I met their eyes did they elaborate. I knew my animal parables by heart, and hearing of more snagged my attention. "Some have wolves. Some, elephants. Some, leeches. You may take the time, later, to reflect on how each of these could be an anxiety."

"The scorpion and the fox." I held my hands out, a scale for the example. "Trusting fox. Adverse scorpion. One's too naive, latching onto the first person met, the other too hostile towards help without lashing, bringing them both down."

Translated as enthusiasm, my comment delighted them. I guess I was enthusiastic, if a quiet sort of it. Stories were food for this soul. So salubrious was the concept that I knew already what my "animal" could be.

"That's one interpretation, yes, yes." They paused for a drink. "As for me, I like imagining mine as a rattlesnake."

"Really. Snake? Small fear to crumble under."

"Not so. Not so, but subtle. The serpent that rattles when afraid. The constant noise is not easy to ignore, and until the object of fear has passed that will not stop."

Felt accurate enough. Though our snakes didn't make noise or ever appear afraid. They lunged if you stepped on or too close to them, and if it was poisonous, the most that could be done was amputation or a pillow over the mouth. An entire other level of philosophic talk.

And because I felt their stare, waiting for my half of the exchange, I said quickly, "Mine would be one of the great cats, not a doubt." Knowing my answer wasn't the trouble; it was admitting the size, the weight that was pressed on my shoulders so that I would sink through the muddy earth into my own grave. "The larger it is, the more accurate."

I had known all along where others might have puzzled until the head blew up. Growing up like me, one would find lots of time to think about insubstantial things. Serving under my predecessor, I found the open, spare minutes of living inside my head. In the slippery seconds I had free of my brother's stare, I daydreamed of being anything but me. And last night, the spiral of wishing to take a billion things back, the thoughts were like the stars. And as of late I have come to realize; paranoia, in all its forms, it loved to dig claws and bite teeth into the unsuspecting child. It adored its feast of isolation cooked up by reminders, phantoms, by six inch steel gauntlet chains roped to every soul to whom a misdeed was done and that would never go away, not really, until that shadow spirit may rest in peace. 

"Clementine?" My Therapist put aside their beverage. And they leaned in to touch my hand. "Some anxieties are more crippling than others. But the pain is no less." They added, "We are all, all of us, children deep down. All of us are afraid of something bigger than ourselves, and hoping for someone to come save us."

I took my hand back. "And what does that make you?"

"What's that?"

Clarifying, I said, "Who are you in this analogy? Are you the bigger-but-not-nearly-as big-as-the-peril person who's coming to save the day? Only you feel the need to coax the map out of me?"

The same as I was doing, the Therapist was looking around; the same spark of suspicion through different minds. The cakes, the tea, the room changes. The chipper assistant who complimented too much. It felt like bribery. Like I had never left the era of ten years in which I was the second-in-command under a general who admired me only for my powers, I felt like I was being used to get something from me.

A chest only made for something to loot out of it. 

Yet a twinge in the back of my head, a pinch on the conscience, was there.

That wasn't true.

Stabby was paying this person to do a job. Probably running all across the many worlds that offered treasure to make the weekly sessions happen at all.

And the job they were paid for required unprecedented - unprecedented to one of a race that didn't have psychologists - ways to make me talk about why I was a child who got held back from growing up.

My thoughts were my own, but did they really do good in my head? Better off unspoken?

The Therapist - my Therapist - kept their hand next to mine, neither touching nor retreating. "I would like to think... I'd like to think myself as the companion, the friend fighting beside you something bigger than myself - my own chains - hoping we could save each other."

I didn't comment on the mawkish quality of that last part. 

"When I said that you are not volatile, that was the truth. But jabbing at you... forcing for answers... that easily changes that. Call it coaxing. Even call it manipulation. But I choose to take your process one session at a time. My desire is a safe comforting environment, a place for you to speak only when you are ready. If that means catering to your needs and likes, big and small, I will happily oblige." Their hand stayed put.

One thing I decided from that: manipulation implied influence at the expense of a person. Though I didn't feel exactly taken advantage of, I wasn't about to forgive not simply coming up front to me. A questionnaire about my likes and dislikes would have been less sneaky, less... vile.

Again, I told myself, they were doing a job. And they had to have been doing it by what they thought was right. They were being paid actual money to help me, so saying they wanted something out of me - not counting my testimony and issues - was a bit hollow.

And so, off of the back on that understanding, another decision: I wasn't ready to reveal everything.

I could reveal some things, knowing now, as long as Stabby did, too, I could trust them enough.

But not enough for every single thing.

I told them this; they did not seem to mind.

"Very well. A small delay to build some real trust. One session at a time," they reiterated, enunciated. "Small things first." When they didn't move their hand still, I gave it a small pat. I'd room for sympathy if not clemency. 

"Where do we even start?"

"Well, if you are not yet comfortable telling about certain things, how about showing them?" They tapped their fingers in thought. "Do you draw?"

I took a breath.

"Anybody can draw," they answered, canceling out the question I was about to ask. "Professionalism is a different thing, but anyone can take pen to paper. So how about a bit of homework to give me upon your return? Anything you wish to draw. And we will work from there."

I spoke this next question with caution. "You think that will get us somewhere?"

They shrugged, my habit of indecisiveness. "We will see."

It was appropriate, they felt, to end the session here. As we came out, Stabby was curling up on the floor, in the process of that. A shelf six feet above him had the Jason assistant crying for help, trapped.

Now how did you get up there?" my Therapist murmured, getting a step stool. 

Jason tweeted, once in their arms, "Handle with care, shortcake!" 

I stared at Stabby, who stretched and yawned. '"Huh? Did something happen?"

"Poor Jason got stuck on here." Cooing, my Therapist pet the thing's head like their plushie.

Stabby hopped onto my shoulders and tsked. "Oh. that's just terrible.

Rolling my eyes, I poked him. "Yeah," I deadpanned. "Terrible."

He was playing the innocent rabbit all the way home.


	4. Week IV

Nope.

Not doing it this week.

This silly, sly, sneaky sap of a birdbrain completely forgot the date, and Clementine was coming under an assumption that I would let her bare all her emotional insecurities via tainted ink on white paper on a day meant for anything but grief and reflection. 

No.

Call me sneaky.

Repetitive.

Manipulative, perhaps.

But dismissive of her emotional needs? No.

This vow made, I placed the record player and its vinyls on the appropriate shelf and drew the curtains tight over the window. Not one beam of sunshine allowed in the vacant office today. And I locked the door upon exiting. A hollow office to well tell no appointments were to happen on this joyous holiday.

Convenient that my prized client was coming through a portal right as I was thinking this. She, carrying Stabby like I was carrying Cadet and Jason, and her friend both had all the puzzling of an eager school child.

"Absolutely not," was my answer when she parted her lips. "It's Valentine's Day."

That apparently wasn't answer enough.

"Excuse me?" Stabby sat up.

"Holiday," I elaborated. "Today is a holiday. And you both should be celebrating."

Clementine stammered, "Valen- what? Wait! But my drawings-" She held them out as though expecting me, like a teacher, to take them.

"They can be shown next week."

"But it's Friday-"

"And also a holiday." 

Stabby said, "I'm paying you to see her."

I reassured him, "Not going to charge for this week, my friend. Go have the week off for your lovers, both of you." 

The rabbit muttered something about a Gale. Oooh, free ammo.

And Clementine still held the papers out. "Lovers? But- What- Valentine's day?" 

"Ah, yes." The state of being not-human was a hammer tap to my temple. "Yes, Valentine's Day. A human tradition, dear."

Her hands must have gotten sweaty; the whole stack fell, papers scattering everywhere. I stooped to help her.

"A day, in human culture, in which love is celebrated," I explained. "Love and candy, really. Mostly the candy. Ahem. And many consider the day of Saint Valentine crucial to relationships and emotional health. The latter of which is my ultimate goal for you. So..." I handed her the half I'd gathered, joining it with the half she'd gathered. "Go smooch your love."

Over more mutterings Stabby was making about not being "there" yet, Clementine said coldly, "I need to be liked before I can be loved." Stabby tapped the arm holding him, all frowns.

"True," said I. "But people do like you, Clementine. One is bound, by that extent, to love you. One, in fact, does. Right Stabby? You both know this, you both love each other. Not that way, of course - ew - but it counts. You have love, literally, right before your hearts." Humming, I pointed to where Stabby was indeed held close to the spirit's chest.

Said spirit looked doubtful. "But..."

"Alright, how many friends, real friends whom you would trust with your life, do you have?"

She held up her fingers. "Stabby. Faye." And she made an expectant look at me. Stabby held a deadpan stare and two digits to accompany the names of Clementine and a "Feathers".

Paranoia may have loved to dig its claws into both these poor souls, but I was adamant.

This would not stand.

I clapped. "Wonderful, you have friends at all! Better than zero. Clementine, is Faye your best friend? How much do you trust him? What does he do for you? And Stabby. Who is Feathers to you? Do you trust him with your life?"

Stabby growled, "He is my kid. And I can't die, so of course I do."

And Clementine, her tiny, pink smile not escaping my notice, murmured that, besides Stabby, Faye was indeed her best friend, and someone who put up with her bullcrap, having not ditched her "yet". 

"Well, shoot," I said about Stabby's statement. "What about this Gale I heard you mention?"

His fuzzy, brown and black and white cheeks, they colored also with a tinge of pink.

"Ahh... then give them these." I tucked under his front paws a small bouquet. "Daffodils for rebirth and new beginnings," I said with a smile, "and yellow roses for joy in friendship. There you go." Now to Clementine. "As for Faye, go give him these." Shoving into the now vacant crook of her arm a big ol' heart box, I giggled, "And spend Valentine's Day with him."

The two of them, by some universal force causing the stars to align, said on sync, "But I don't- we're not- we aren't a couple!"

I shrugged. "Singles' Awareness Day, then. Free stuff no matter what."

Clementine spoke up on her own. "Singles' Awareness Day?"

"Self explanatory, dear. Self explanatory." I turned her around and redid her hair into a flowery braid, all kind of violet flowers stuck between her locks.

"But-"

"No time for that. Do something wild with your best friend."

Stabby said, "But I-"

"No time for that, either. Go! Shoo! Sweep that boy - Clementine - and that bestie - Stabby - off their feet! With friendship love! Which may evolve into marital love! Go! Faylemtine and Staleby for life!"

"What the fu-"

I shoved Clementine through the rift, hugged my little buddies, and hopped out of the office, on my way.

Therapist: 1

Loneliness on Valentine's/Singles' Awareness Day: zip.


	5. Week V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got sick, couldn't focus on writing. So enjoy this quick, unedited fluff piece in its place, since the story technically follows what happens each week.

Well, this blows.

This blows very much.

One case of Valentine's Day shipping followed by a case of bird flu has terribly thrown off my schedule.

Already I had notified Stabby, so there would be no out-of-nowhere cancelling today. Now was to think of rest, and of not using my vocal chords at all.

Fortunately, my office doubles as a bedroom, so I won't have to package Jason again, not requiring elsewhere to go suffer.

A strenuous shove of the bookshelf out of the way got the bed unfolded. It was tidy, if a smidgen dusty. The floral print had clouded, not an appealing color at all.

"Ja-" I frowned at my croak. No good. Even if I wanted to speak, no good. From my pocket I withdrew a remote, so Jason could be wordlessly called, and in barely a moment he whirred in. And in but half a moment, with gestured direction, he was disposing of the grit.

Funny fact to share. A moment, in the terms of time, is one minute and thirty seconds. So, really, these "Moments of Reflection" Clementine shared with me, they were much, much longer than the time-specific moments. And, dear me, if we had as much to discuss as I suspected, there would be many, so very many of these much-longer-than-time-specific-moments moments.

"Danger!" Jason screeched. "Warning! Lightheadedness at eighty-seven percent! Blackout imminent!" His face changed to a crying emote as he finished his job.

Dear, but how he was right. The room seemed to darken against the obvious daylight.

So in crawling beneath the covers, Jason sliding off in no harm, I roosted myself into a curled-up form. Warmth filled these sheets like a fresh, oven-baked burrito.

My assistant was saying something about orange juice and could I please stay safe in the bed, hun, but I did indeed black out, imminent to. The void - my personal void - welcomed me into its maw.


	6. Week VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves some brief mentions and depictions of blood and gore. The appropriate tags will be added.

It was a dark and stormy afternoon, and the rainy clouds were dribbling over my head.

Selfish.

Coward.

Useless.

All my points towards an argument - they felt correct at the time - they were uprooted by those words, and flitted off into nothingness.

"I noticed you came alone today," said my Therapist when I first sat down, welcomed inside in silence, all my drawings tucked under my arm. Three weeks had been a lion's share of time to stew over my homework. And over Stabby being the biggest idiot in any forest on any Earth. I had three dozen by Val's Time Day, or whatever the damned holiday was called.

For simplification, I discarded all but nine. The least generic ones that would show cooperation, willingness to heal.

That in itself put me ten steps higher than Stabby. 

"Where is your friend?" my Therapist had asked. I hadn't react to their brilliant observation.

Feeling pressed, I muttered, "I bet every glittery coin-shaped thing that buys stuff he will moping in the waiting room any minute now."

"Miss Clementine, did something happen?"

"Stress level has breached forty-eight percent!" added the Jason.

"I'm fine."

My Therapist pushed, "If you're troubled about something-"

"I said-" they withdrew from whatever hostile blaze they saw in me "-I am fine." If we delayed the drawings a week more, I was going to lose my mind.

And that was that. To each other we said nothing in the time of me turning in my homework and of my Therapist looking over the pieces. At some point they dismissed the Jason. Its emotion slate blanked when the offer for more drinks was rejected.

Privacy could be lovely. My people couldn't be bothered to bother me, and only when stepping up to make an announcement or part a scuffle was I heard. A petty price to pay for no one looking over my shoulder. Yet it felt irrelevant if I was having privacy only to give it away to my therapist. I felt exposed, a million eyes affixed when there were only two. The killer raised on a pedestal for the trial.

Or execution.

My Therapist sifted through the eight papers. When something interested them, they cast a glance that I darted to avoid. Not like I knew which one they were looking at. Their face was dim in the glow of lamp next to them. And the storm replaced well our prolonged silence, crackles and booms instead of awkward coughs and needless small talk.

All I had was the waiting. And the wondering if Stabby was moping outside as a bunny or as a person.

"Well then," my Therapist said, seemingly done. With gentle movement, they laid each drawing on the low table, right side up facing me. Three were put to the fore. The other six stayed, the guilty facing the more guilty. I'd drawn in charcoal, smudgy black and white images. A few were generic: a celebration amongst the people, rabbits in a circle, a bird with a stick in its beak. Then I scratched the soil, dug into something else: a man portrayed in the process of putting on a mask as a hand changed into a paw, something I didn't want to explain as anything but a child's description of their boogeyman.

One other was of, simply, me. Me, smiling the biggest smile I could have one day, as someone stood over me. I would never tell my Therapist who.

And then there were the three. The ones I thought the most adequately made, plunging both hands into the earth of my psyche. Yet they were the ones I hated most of all.

One: A little girl huddled into herself, gross and bedraggled, as the feet, tails, and wings of many forms left her to the dark.

Two: A man, basked in firelight, his clothes open to boast muscle on his arms and chest, and the scars that came with it. From his great brown mane peeked twin sets of horns, ram's and goat's. And touching his pale, grey eyes, one scarred from a terrible fight, the most gentle of smiles as he upturned a gloved palm for a little hand to accept.

And third: In face of the picture's beholder, the sneering, toothy maw of a beast, large and grey and black and bloody, holding out its prizes of a juicy, plump heart and the thirty-three bits of interlocking bones. Its eyes were narrow, daring the beholder to try anymore. They won't, it said, for they already had lost.

My Therapist focused on me. "You remember why I said to do this?"

I frowned, knowing full well, answering, "It's a map to my biggest insecurities. Talking straight out wastes time. The stress is a wrench in the cogs." And manipulating me via the decor hasn't helped, I added to myself.

"We have to talk 'straight out' no matter what. And we are going to encounter stress no matter what." They clasped their hands together like a prayer for the damned. "I'd like, I would very much like, to think this exercise will jump start the progress and spare some of the pain. Some of it. The cogs may yet crush through something like gingerbread, if broken down properly." They quit the gesture. "But I won't continue until I have the okay."

I expected them to say "okay", the question, next, but nothing else. Meeting their eyes, I found all the patience I wish I'd had for me.

I consented, pausing for a drink of the now cold raspberry tea.

They looked relieved by that. A reward for that patience. "Then as a start," they said, "I'd like to ask, about this one." Nudging forward the second one, the one of the kindly man reaching out, they looked to me. Their buffed nail remained over the scarred eye. "Who is this to you?"

My tongue tingled, and I swallowed, saying, "My predecessor, Bartholomew. The General."

X X X

Clementine had right about one thing, that Stabby had been moping in the waiting room. But not as a bunny.

Familiars with their own magic had a league of usefulness to both their owners and themselves, most of all being shape-shifting for the one who wished to appear as not a helpless animal, or a person with a very punchable face. Or in Stabby's case, to face-plant the carpet while not being mistaken for a dead rodent. He didn't want to be thrown in the dumpster.

He looked not dissimilar to his rabbit form; his was the same black and brown freckly face that in general was affixed to an expression of despising the daily activity known as living, and the same floppy ears peeked from thin brown hair. Twin sets of horns curled from the top of his skull. 

Everything, in his opinion, sucked. And he sucked. Clementine wasn't talking to him, Feathers was disappointed, and the biggest pity party ever was being crashed by the annoying roomba insisting to mutter sentiments of worry outside its owner's door. The roll of scotch tape on a bookshelf was too far and too high up for the wallowing familiar to fetch it. 

"Will you shut up?" The first try was muffled, so he lifted his head and said it again.

"Oh, oh, apologies, sweetie." It glided over to him.

"Don't," grumbled Stabby, "call me sweetie."

But it was droning on. "My owner's stress level is exceedingly high. So is the lady Clementine's! Sixty-eight at this moment, I can read it through that door!" It bumped into Stabby. "And your stress level is dangerously high. Oh no!"

Stabby backhanded the robot's visor, sending it reeling into a chair leg. "That's because you keep talking!"

"Eep! Danger level reaching nineteen percent. Regret initiating." Making an animated blink, it explained, "Cannot compute against worrying for the client, or anyone. Request for forgiveness?"

Stabby might have forgiven it for what was ultimately harmless, were his soul not made of salt. "Mm, no. I don't think so."

Jason squealed, as though it could not compute against rejection, either. "But-! But I have regrets!"

"Nope."

"B-b-"

"Nahh. That would make your life easy." Pushing himself up, he sat cross legged. "And this is more fun."

A series of whines and whistles followed. On the emote visor, an animation of bawling eyes played out.

Stabby rolled his eyes, a common habit of his. "What? You need validation, too? We're all broken, robot."

But, a stray thought chimed in, no one had to be.

And like that, a wicked seed planted itself. No one was around; and Clementine, if she came out any time soon, would possibly get a kick out of hearing the story later on. A once upon a time about a splendid game with the nuisance.

Snapping a knife into existence and fetching the roll of tape, Stabby approached Jason, who rammed in repeat against the chair leg in failing to escape.

"Honey pie? What are you doing?"

"Oh, just validating you." He picked up Jason and wide ways taped the knife to the top of it. The blade stuck out like a mighty unicorn's horn. "You have now been inducted into the Stabbing Club!" Stabby said, all full of the pride of a new father.

"Eeep!" Jason squeaked again. "Danger level is now at fifty percent."

Chuckling, Stabby turned back into a rabbit and hopped onto it. The robot drove in wild directions at the unimpressive MPH of 2.5.

"Help. Help. I'm being hijacked." 

"Onwards! We'll dominate this waiting room!"

X X X

"He was leader of all us Shadow Spirits, the ultimate power," I was telling them. If I hadn't expected, or wanted, to speak of the General in some form, I wouldn't have made that picture of him. There was a massive package to unload off my shoulders. But so soon to bring him up was where I got blindsided. So much to say in so soon a time. I had the stage, at least. "There was never a general like him because he was driven. The legends say that he killed a of bears, and made the largest one's skin his coat. And he led us into an era of victory." My voice faltered at "victory". An ironic word for us nowadays.

My Therapist looked hardly impressed. "I see. And," their finger wandered to the outstretched hand in the drawing, "you see him here in the most positive light. Something pivotal to your life. He's shown as a savior here, rather than a killer of bears."

"Because he saved me." My ears felt hot.

"As a child?" The nail tapped the smaller hand resting in the General's palm.

"No. It was- I put artistic touch in. He's- he was one of the largest spirits. Made insubordinate feel small. He carved his name throughout our home, and was near impossible to kill. Something the royal alchemist made so his skin was hardened, tougher than a boar's." I coughed. "I was made his second-in-command when the last one became a turncoat."

"May I ask about that? Being his right hand, did he treat you unkindly in that position?" Taking the first drawing of the little girl in the dark, they pointed to her, then to the General's portrait. "Because I don't see you coming from this, to this. One can't impress the 'ultimate power' out of nothing but raw grief."

Because you're looking at it backwards, was my silent answer.

For my vocal one, I almost smirked out of pity. "No. One can't. They need grief, so soaked in oil that you'd be wringing it for a thousand nights, and a spark of hope. Then despair, from having that spark snatched away so fast you must either act or die. And lastly, you need rage. If you choose not to die, you need rage, and you need it to burn forever. Or else."

"Clementine?"

"He made me feel like everything, Therapist. At his side, he fulfilled what was a cavity in my chest. I had nothing else, so when he offered something to me, I took it with both hands. Being at his side made me feel like everything instead of nothing."

"I was aware such a role belonged to Stabby," they said. "Having you at his side, validating your existence."

I could swear they were looking right through me. And my ears burned hotter. "He," I coughed again. "He did. Does."

"So he never was unkind? Because I see no reason for you to turn to Stabby unless something went wrong with this predecessor."

They had me there. A part of me was still so defensive. "He was there for me, ever since he heard about how I got my first kill. Unkind could be a word for him... but not to me. He tolerated no insubordination, no hesitance, so when I carried out his order with all of me, that was all he could want. But..."

"But?"

I released a pent sigh, sat on my hands. Outside, the rain pattered against the roof, bubbling us in that space of privacy. My claim on these thoughts was losing its stake; the earth was damp, and that stake was wiggling free from the earth, soon to unleash a flood. Regardless of if anyone wanted to hear or I wanted them to hear. It was like that first drawing: if I spoke wrong, would I be left to the dark?

"But I was the wild card he could use." The words tumbled free, a whisper turned to a full voice taken from the heart. I had needed to say this for a long time. "He was proud, vicious, on top of mighty or determined. And because of how I had made my first kill, he aimed and succeeded at making me exactly like him. All it took was honey laced words."

"So your problems were greatened by him. Not started."

"Yeah. You could say. I was always broken."

"How did this first kill happen?"

My hiss startled us both. "You would wish I never told you."

Pointing to my drawing of the leopard, at that dribbling, excavated heart, they bit their lip, chafed their hands together, when I nodded. 

I continued, "He saw something terrible in me, and I didn't want to see the silver platter that my position was set upon. Even when, down the line, I started to suspect that was all I was for. I was happy being his loyal dog."

My Therapist put a hand to their face as they leaned back. When their hand dropped a touch of charcoal remained. "That sounds like a whole can of worms right there."

"Yep. Fifteen-plus years serving in his name."

"Mm."

"Mmhm."

"So being his second-in-command for so long had given you the place for next in line, did it?"

"Oh no, I wasn't even considered." I scoffed. "You were about to ask why I'd been so overwhelmed being put in my place?"

They whispered, "Yes. But I would have thought being loyal-"

"Yeah, in other clans or kingdoms or whatever, I bet it works that way. I believe I told you, I was picked out of desperation. He was using his dying breath to say I would take his place, if you'd like to know how desperate he got." The change in the air became thick. Silent questions bled between us. "The Shadow Spirits get their next in line in two ways: the General - or Chief now - passes on the power, or someone, anyone, slays him or her in battle. Conceding can happen, but pride is a thing. But," I huffed, "the General never had to, because he had found his heir. Ten years ago, he found this little girl, almost as strong as him, definitely as vicious."

"He seized her?"

I confirmed, "He started a war, and dragged us all down with him." The lightning crashed between us. Thunder swallowed a growl I thought I'd made. "It seemed a cruel joke when the girl busted herself free and found protection. His plan fell apart."

"I see." My Therapist leaned back, watched the rain sob against the window. Up to now, they hadn't mentioned him, probably for my ease of the stress or whatever they had worded it as, but as our voices muted out in place of the elements outside, I knew we were coming back to Stabby. That they pushed all the drawings together and left them in a neat stack gave certainty of it.

Having nothing to say of Stabby, I pursed my lips. Being the only one more broken than me, he should have been here, eager to heal himself like I had been willing to. I talked about the General. I drew him as this high god. And in honesty I spoke of him and his idiocy, and the brat who stole his fathering gaze only to dump him for his grave.

I did this. Me. Willing and able. All that made me ten steps higher than the rabbit.

"Clementine," said my Therapist in a thin voice. "Maybe, as terrible as it is to say, maybe this General passing away was for the best. Because all that remains of that power is yourself, willing and able to bring better change to your home."

Before I could say I knew this already, they stood, and had a white-knuckle hand on my arm.

"But you are not the General. You are not ultimate power over everyone, and certainly not over Stabby now." They sighed, loosening their hand. "There is only you, and there is only him left. And this cage of your own inventions, it ensnares so long as the both of you hold onto this poisonous notion that your General of an era now dead holds judgment over you. The moment you and Stabby stop caring about that, you'll be all the more happy."

"And how exactly am I supposed to do that?" I said weakly. "He's the one being stubborn. He needs help." I almost spilled again, this about Stabby's own crisis. Wisely, I cut my lip biting down.

Palm to their forehead, they muttered, "You like your metaphors, don't you? Then take this one and consider that the child who drowns in a tar pit is the same amount of dead as the old man who drowns in the sea." They touched my reddened cheek. "Go find him."

Maybe I was being the stubborn one.

A sharp twinge bit at my neck as I remembered our fight.

I threatened to quit therapy on him.

And I asked why I bothered healing myself if he was giving up on himself.

My heart palpitated. A horrible, rancid burn spread through my through up to my eyes. I missed him. And I threw every ounce of love into his face like dirt.

If my Therapist hadn't run to the door, I would have thought the scream to be mine.

Stumbling, a shaky mess, I followed them out, prepared for the worst.

What we got soothed my rapid heart. 

What we got was confusion.

Stabby was riding the Jason around the empty waiting room, cackling all the way around. A knife had been taped to the assistant's body, and was spotted red at the tip.

"You're evil now," the rabbit declared. 

"Noooooooo!" cried the Jason. "One hundred ten percent remorse level!" It bust out a bawling face, taking down a bookshelf in its self-pitying tantrum. 

My Therapist said, "Stabby, why does my assistant look distressed? More importantly, why do you have a kitchen knife strapped to him?"

Too late did the rabbit know he was found out to effectively hide under the couch, he shrugged. "No reason at all, Mr. Therapist."

"I- Um- Knives are very dangerous. Stabby, this is highly-"

"Knives," Stabby corrected, "are only dangerous in the wrong hands. And it looks like your assistant is the dangerous one." He would have continued, I'm sure. But then I started laughing. "Um, kid?" My Therapist glanced my way. I laughed harder, and got to my knees and hugged myself.

Stabby hopped onto my shoulders and squeaked as I decided to hug him instead. 'Kid?"

I coughed a couple times to get my breath back, ruffled his ears, and looked straight into his eyes. Hoping that he wouldn't catch the splotches on my face, made the most gentle of smiles.

"Huh, I see..." He nuzzled my hand. I think that was enough. "We should probably get out of here before I get in trouble. 

"Heh, maybe," I said, taking notice of my Therapist, who in ire glowered and tapped a foot. I shrugged and booked it away, Stabby sticking his tongue out.

Their words didn't go in one ear and out the other. It wasn't like that just because the session got cut short by absurdity. I had it, I think; what they said about not caring about each other's problems so we could be happier made some sense.

And the least I could do in joy was be a good friend. And one day soon, a good daughter.


	7. A Different Kind of Session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week is a collaboration between myself and TheOtter99, the creator and writer of Stabby, whom we agreed should have a conversation with the good Therapist. Stabby's just as troubled as Clementine, and we felt he deserved some time in the spotlight. All his dialogue in this chapter is written by her.

The time had struck five P.M. when the Therapist heard that knock on the door. Tentative it was; meek, unready for a talk. By that alone, they could guess who had come. 

Still, finding it polite not to assume, they came to the ajar door and called.

"Hello," said back their visitor, the rabbit who looked way up to see the Therapist's face. Stabby's ears flopped back as he did this. 

"Ah, Stabby, welcome. Are you here about recommendations?"

The rabbit looked about himself, not at all trusting of the surrounding silence. "I don't know. I already have a list of a few good experts. I'm not entirely sure why I'm back."

"Well," said the Therapist, "you're welcome to come any time if you want to talk about anything. Would you like to come in?"

Nose twitching, Stabby entered, one sluggish hop after another. "I guess so. There isn't too much to discuss though."

"That is fine. Friendly discussion about nothing is never a bad choice."

Stabby could only nod at that. Doctors, to a familiar who only knew the forest and its ways by heart, were part of the newness that had overtaken his life.

They were well and good. Helpful. Essential in some cases.

But in his own, he had stepped into, entirely, a reflection of the world as he was aware of. It was all too new for his comfort.

If he had hope, it was to be in a slower pace.

He followed the Therapist to two stools No Clementine in sight. He jumped in place and lost his grip on the first rung.

The Therapist cocked their head. "Would you like me to put a cushion on the floor?"

"No, no, I got this." Hopping again, he got nearly to the second rung. His reward was a face first crash. "Yes, please."

The Therapist laughed softly and obliged with his wish. "The common strife of short people." They took to the same seating method, crossing their legs.

"I'm a rabbit." Stabby forced a chuckle.

"Indeed." The Therapist chose to leave out that rabbits counted as people, too, if only for the sake of the joke. They paused as Stabby withdrew a paper, crumbled.

"Just a paper of the choices I have," Stabby answered the silent question. Smoothing it flat, he showed them.

Right away they recognized a few of the names. Experts like themself, involved in the same goal of healing. The writer of the page had an elegance of the great kings of an oriental past, or of the deep forests of the elvenkind. Rich, graceful, a gentle hand that left thin letters. 

"I see, I see," the Therapist murmured when finished. "And do you think you've narrowed the choices at all?"

"This one." The familiar pointed. "From what I've researched, her office is by a lake and sometimes appointments can actually be even closer to the water. Or something. I often find myself in water to calm down when I need to so..." He scratched one of his long ears. 

"Ah..." They knew this name well. Not a friend, nor enemy. Just someone integral to their own work. "Ah, lovely. The lake shores are a lovely place for healing. And this one I took some inspiration from, actually. I think you'd suit well with her."

"That's nice to hear from you." Taking the paper back, Stabby looked out the door. It remained wide, inviting any to enter and intrude.

"She isn't coming," the Therapist reassured. "I sent her to keep Jason company today; his battery is low, and he gets lonely while charging."

"Okay. Just..." He still looked back. So long passed that the silence made a ringing in one's ears. "Don't tell her what I'm doing here."

"Client confidentiality. What is spoken in this room stays in this room." They made a grand sweep with their arm.

"Yes, but I am not your client."

"Very true. But I'd like to think a right still applies. You could tell me anything, and I would hold to myself an oath of secrecy."

Stabby rested his head on his cushion. A late orange sunbeam danced across his fur. "Then... thank you."

"You're welcome, my friend," they smiled.

Stabby pointed to himself.

"Yes," the Therapist chuckled. "You are the only other person here."

"I haven't done too much to be your friend."

"I feel you forget the immeasurable kindness you commit onto Clementine and Feathers. And whoever else you have come to. You don't need to do anything for me to be considered my friend."

He frowned. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be saying so if I wasn't. Yes, I'm certain."

Stabby started playing with his ears. He, unconvinced, perhaps, nodded the slightest bit.

"May I ask a question?"

"It depends on the question."

Now it was the Therapist's turn to nod. There were, in reality, many. So many that they deeply wanted to know, their heart beat with each one. 

Always a bunny?

First home?

Family?

The General?

Feathers' familiar now?

Your resurrected soul?

But all of them tread the broad path, the one sowed with mistrust if spoken. 

Better to stick to the subject at hand.

"What convinced you to seek help? Clementine told me some of last week, that she had been at a dispute with you, but I'm assuming this was why."

Confirming, Stabby said, "I realized that if I'm going to be a father, then I must be the best one. I can't be the best one without some help." He turned to the window, and his face became a mask, a strip of light over his melancholic expression. "Everything I do is for them."

"I find a father can find all his motivation in those smaller than himself. "The Therapist's voice was equally as brooding. "It's a good thing that you've put yourself to a challenging task."

Stabby huffed a small laugh. "They aren't smaller than me. And I'm not referring to the literal sense of size."

"I was speaking in metaphors, don't worry. And, if not smaller, then fine, younger. Though fathers can easily be found in those not specifically an old folk much larger than someone in great need of real love. Anything and anyone - even the generic picture - can be a suitable guardian as long as there's trust and respect."

"I guess..." Most of his host's philosophical speak was hard to grasp at the first hearing.

"So if you are aiming for better fatherhood, does that mean Feathers and Clementine have taken to see you as such?"

Stabby confirmed for Feathers. For Clementine, he elaborated that she wasn't comfortable with calling him by an actual fatherly title yet.

"I think I understand." Another pulsing question, this put to the front. "Has she had shaky family relations?" They add, "Actually, have they both?"

Stabby stammered, "Yes, but I don't know how much I should tell you..."

"Alright," they nodded. "I trust if she wants me to know she plans to tell me on her own time. Please forgive me if I overstepped."

Stabby insisted, "You are fine."

The Therapist said again, "Alright," and moved on to a last question. "Do you feel your own session will help you for your own healing, as well as Feathers and Clementine's?"

"I haven't really cared about my own healing. I just want to be better for my kids, so they stop worrying about me."

"Mmm."

"Yes..." Stabby stammered some more. "Um, anyway... I can still bring Clementine in here if there's time."

"Not necessary," the Therapist decided. "I feel getting some time with my assistant suits as her therapy for today. If that is alright."

"If you think that's what's best then," Stabby sighed, "I guess I can't argue."

The light of the sun crawled away. Storm clouds rolled over the mighty blue, brought the cozy office into a gloom.

"It's healthy for anyone to fluctuate the ordinary with something new, so... yes, I believe so. This kind of change for you is no different."

Stabby said it almost mutely. "My life feels like nothing but change."

"Well... maybe a rest at the lake side, a listener there to - well, to listen. Maybe that is where you can find solace from so much change. Make this your one stagnant thing, your constant. I hear the waters are almost like a mirror in the spring."

"I hate my reflection."

The Therapist ignored the possibility of this being a self-deprecating quip.

"Not to look in. To... the sight of purely still waters can leave a restoring effect."

Stabby watched the sky filter between the black clouds, all the shine of a deep thought coming out over his dark eyes. "I guess that could be nice."

"Mhm!" Unfolding their legs, they said, "You would be surprised how little it takes."

And they both were made aware of Jason's charge cycle being completed, and the Therapist offered to walk Stabby out.

"Yes.... and thank you," Stabby answered, hiding behind his ears.

"You're welcome, Stabby." They pat his head. "Not a thing to her. I won't tell a thing, I promise."

Stabby nodded in reply, almost smiling, proper as the good friend he was.

He was a good friend to Clementine. To Feathers. To everyone whose lives they had seen him touch. He was something extraordinary to this multiverse.

"Even if you do not believe it yourself. Even if you don't yet."


	8. Week VIII

"See, when I first of of the Shadow Spirits, I thought of all the gloomy things, the things of worshiping the night. Things that had these ethereal forms and were all about the destruction of light dwellers, or some form of an angst-riddled goal.

"But I never would have imagined the lot of you were actual pixies. Amongst the nature flitting, easy prey to what are considered to humans pets or pests. And catching the beauty of the sunbeams between your horns or antlers. It must be more convenient not to be those any more. 

"Not fairies. We were always shadow spirits. You make us sound puny - the height of field mice was not so terrible," I drawled, making a lazy sweep of my hands over wild clusters of forget-me-nots that fenced in our long path. The garden was much larger than the deceptive window, and the brick wall that I now knew was a wall of a compost bin, had shown. A whole maze to entice the child's delight. 

Not a word, My Therapist had spoken, of talks or examining my charcoal art today. Taking my hand, they threw open a door that my not exploring enough made me overlook and showed off their garden. I had so often looked outside that it had muted to background noise. The beauty caught me staring on occasion at the nephrite of grass, lapis of sprouting buds. But one look into my face, I guessed, mixed the bag of to-dos again. First the suggestion of drawing instead of telling, then playtime with the Jason, now a walk in this other land right out the door.

My first impression had been of the thick panels overhead and around. We were caged in, us the garden rats basked in a slight tint of green. Fitting, for my Therapist called it a greenhouse. Something of humans' invention. We could see smudges that were people walking by, the vehicles they used, other buildings. It was the final gasp of winter; yet all the warmth of a newborn spring stayed. Again, the idea of caged garden rats sprung, because this paradise felt too good to believe it could exist elsewhere. Only welcome was spring's breath, summer's showers. Devices that kept the life hydrated provided the latter.

"Hmm, still." My Therapist walked behind me as I caressed the flowers. "I would find to the Neverland an enchanting species as the shadow spirits would fit well. Like the puzzle piece to the wrong puzzle that somehow is the correct shape and color still, so none would take notice of the stand out."

I paused. "Never land what?"

They bumped into me, not looking. "Oh- Neverland, it's- never mind. I'll show you later, lend it off my reading shelf."

I scoffed. "What reading shelf? That bookcase is a dust mine."

A shrug. My Therapist hopped in front and walked backwards, inviting me to follow, tiptoe steps all the way. Their locks on the back of their head swished. "I've been idle, haven't moved my things into there yet. And," they grinned "I have my ways of getting nice things to my clients regardless of that."

"I see," said I. "And where are these clients you always talk about?" This was a question that had been rattling its words lately. "In all the weeks I've been coming I've been walking through a graveyard."

"Oh?"

"You, the Jason, Stabby... maybe that poor lady he stabbed the other week -" the mental image of him and the knife on the Jason also rattled in, and I bit the back of my hand. Still, a snicker bubbled free. "But nobody else."

And quick as the scorpion's sting, the humor was gone. I had been lonely plenty my whole life; this was different from seeing life all about you, cherishing, active, alive, yet not invited to be a part of it. A therapist's building that felt as though on the rim, the true end of the universe, that was a whole other feeling. Us few occupied such a barren place of healing. These unconscious wonderings - thoughts that scattered the second you actively thought you were thinking them - burst free.

"Why is that?"

My Therapist slowed, stopped, turned back to a forward walk. Ahead, a stone bench and table. They pat a seat, minding the vines, and the pink popping buds that sprouted like from a grape vine. "Coincidence," they said back, once I obliged, "I would say. They walked a little away, to one of the many waist-high flowerbeds, only to circle back, muttering. Seeking, their sight breezed over the greenery. Absent in voice, they noted, "Not fair to book a dozen clients. Same time frame, not fair, some could wait for hours for the only one there. I'm the only one. Not fair to any of them, better business when that waiting room is all loneliness. Besides one or two souls."

I propped my legs, shivering initially from the granite. "I guess? But you'd think there would be one other waiting to come in, right after me."

A delighted squeal answered, but not for me. They took a seat beside me, close as a lover, and showed the blue daisies gathered, clasped firmly in a bouquet. The whole thing as a baton, they motioned me. "Turn away", the signal said. Four times they did this before I got it through my head. 

"I kept my work to my closest friends. Did therapy in a direct, more direct way," they said. They tugged my hair loose, all of it spilling to the small of my back. I'd let it grow through the winter. It still felt weird having it down, all my adult life keeping it in its thick, glossy boil of a bun. Twin if I felt coquettish. "Therapy, to me, back then meant being a good, needed friend. And quite a few souls who wound up in bad times were in need of but a perceptive ear." Behind me, the flowers were being rustled.

"What made you stop?"

They sighed, but this one didn't have to do with me, either? "Someone who had been in nearly the exact... dire-ness that you had the first week." They said so in something I could say was appreciative melancholy, gratitude for the lifelong years even though they must, in all laws of nature, come to an end.

"So... you weren't an official therapist." I decided not to poke that sore spot.

"No. Not at first, no. One must start somewhere, don't you think?" Tug of my hair. More rustling. A stem was dug in.

"I guess," I repeated. "A blank page is the only realistic start." Summer felt closer, and I knew they were smiling at my apt metaphor. "What were they like? The one in dire need?"

"Lonely. At first. Loss had struck in her life too recently at that time, and from a dear heart who fretted to hear she would be okay... she hid from him." They took a lock, doing something to it. Couldn't tell what except it had to do with the ends; my scalp couldn't feel it. "Impulse boiled in with hard truths unearthed by self-reflection invoked a regretful choice, frightening this friend. And her self-imposed isolation was helpful as if she had inflicted more mayhem instead. It was sad." Tug, tuck, pinch, pull, again. They fell into a pattern, this action I could feel. I tried to turn and see, but they pecked my good antler with a hard flick. 

"There's a part where you were supposed to be helpful, right?"

"No- yes. But I came later. This, here, was when I'd been asked to go to her. Get her out of hiding. So... I did. I made myself her friend, got her on the correct path, and for many years beyond we became almost-companions."

"Almost?"

They grumbled, "Misinterpretation tells that word to be of romantic following. But I followed her strictly for her needs. All she ever wanted - and what she found in me and the one who was worried for her - was a friend."

"And all her problems flitted out the window, off to heaven to eternally die," I rolled my eyes. 

"Not so. We happened to be the shoulders she could cry on." They took three whole portions and tugged. I yelped. "Sorry, dear." They sighed, "No one's problems ever really go away, Clementine. Not the huge ones that refine a soul. You will always have more work to do on yourself."

Past me would have wondered what the point of trying was, then, if I was scaling a hill that would never stop dumping its pebbles and boulders onto me. 

Current me said, honest whisper next to the whispers of the flower stems as they were put in my hair, it's because I have no choice. That I must attend therapy, as decreed by Stabby. And that I must fulfill my only destiny left. I climb because others are counting on me to. And on the way, I build the muscle I need to scale faster.

Having come around to me, my Therapist smiled.

Because not objecting meant I was listening?

Well, I was. My biggest problems wouldn't ever go away. This climb mattered for this destiny of mine. It mattered for everyone that wasn't me.

And, for this self-imposed fate, improving home equaled fulfillment coming all the faster. 

Faster was better. 

The quicker everyone would, about time, enter the real era of healing. 

My Therapist hummed, "Of course, even if we can't knock out the big problems like we want, there's still the teensy ones, the ones we can squish under our boots." My pun incoming senses were a-tingling. "Like no longer being fairy-sized, sneezing pixie dust and normal dust onto each other, and getting eaten by raccoons or something tinier." 

"Field mouse-sized," I corrected.

"Field mouse, yes. Now all the shadow spirits are mighty, ginormous! Buff!" They flexed, I imagine, real muscle, but it was impossible to tell because of the swollen density of their sweater.

And the leering cat's grin and exerted grunts were not playing them to an impressive case.

For me, as I stood my tallest, all it took was bending an arm. Rocks on the limb.

"Whoa!"

I laughed. It felt good, so I looked at them, their ruffled expression, and laughed some more.

And it eased this sense of being the giggler among the stone faces when my Therapist laughed, too.

Maybe we were almost almost-companions. Maybe if plans weren't in the way I could accept a turn on that path.

"You," when we got a hold of ourselves, I answered, "well, you have Riley for us being human-sized at all."

"The one thing your predecessor did right," my Therapist said, sobering. "Telling her to get to it. Could you imagine the mighty General come charging at a bear-" they nodded to, I thought, the brick ground "-the size of a garden gnome? What would he do? Kick my toes in?"

"Yeah," I forced a laugh and hugged myself. "Weakling us. He- um, he had decided we had been small for long enough. It was the only way to escape our enemies. Fighting the wildlife is one thing; bigotry from the self-righteous whisper spirits that may as well be some of your actual pixies is a whole other thing. It was right of him. Even if he wanted, above everything else, to be better than them."

"Better?"

"He thirsted for any power that would mean we were more than the whispers. Safety, dignity in greater height, dominion, power, all were core reasons for his calling on my scientist to make it possible."

"Well, were they so terrible that you would have done the same? That is, if you were General and not him. Hypothetical speak for that period."

I licked my lips. "They are, in their truest nature, everything we are not." That first quip, about us shadow spirits being all about the destruction of light dwellers, chipped at my mind. "Especially now that we're a thousand time larger."

My Therapist took a step back. "Well, you may not be neighboring with such vile creatures anymore, and you may be a far cry from the Neverland pixies, but I can say you are as ravishing as they." 

They had no mirror on them, and no nearby pools of water. But simply the adoration they held upon themselves, the brightening of their cattail eyes, and my own touch of the snaking, flowered, wooly, and of a hundred blues braid down my back, it told me I looked better, a truly better version of myself.

Imagining as all I could do, I closed my eyes and dreamed of a false reality, and of this being a me that all people could accept.


	9. Week IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it will be safe to say from this point forward, dark subject matter will be addressed, and some of the topics will get heavier. There still will be notices as to what is involved, but please be cautioned now if any of the subjects shown in tags bother you.
> 
> Content warning for trauma, family death, and implied abuse.

I welcomed Clementine back to our routine with a presentation of her favorite, the soothing, tingle-on-the-tongue raspberry mint tea. A session on hold for a home emergency, she apologized like a repentant sinner. As if she meant entirely to cancel on the very day last week. Fitting payback, intentional or not, for my Valentine's day stunt. 

Her hair was prettied up. Like when I'd stuck flowers in her braid, she had feathers stuck at odd, porcupine angles. Some crested over her head like a elf's crown. And she bore all the joy of her six-inch grin as that of the gnarly folk charging toward sunny beach days, as described in the jamming tunes I had set on the player as a testing of the waters. Now that we were back, I chose the tea-and-idle-chatter style of session.

Though our talk would not be so idle today.

She came, Jason stalking her heels, with a treat, a wood box the size of her hand if splayed flat and a large leaf inside acting as wax paper for a dozen jelly cookies. Fruit tarts, she said, but I was not fooled. They were sandwich cookies and bright garnet of the gooey center that oozed over, bite-sized delights.

And I found, with a slobbish pop of one, that the the flavors of jazz and midnight dances could be unearthed from the combination of fruit tarts and raspberry mint tea. Clementine giggled from whatever visual reaction I had made.

"We Shadow Spirits are not so angsty and light-hating now, are we?"

"I have misjudged you," I said, bowing my head. "Master, never again will I set unfair doubt upon you. Glory be to your desserts."

"You're giving me too much credit," said Clementine. "They aren't mine."

"Oh?"

"Last time I tried to make food, the stove blew up in my face. A sign from the gods that I may have a green thumb, but it's also charred black.

At her feet, Jason tapped his sturdy body against her heels and made a clamor of chirps; the same thought I had. If we quit on every hobby that yielded the first failure, no one in this vast existence would have any amusement whatsoever. 

When I said this, she ricocheted, "The fox is not born to fly, nor is the sparrow made to breathe water."

"Hey, what did I tell you last time?" I rapped her antler. "A blank page is the only realistic place to start."

"I said that, not you."

"But the idea, though! I wasn't born able to advise and console. I learned. And I had to start that learning from some grounds of life and need. Do you think I walked in here, day one, knowing exactly the advice to give you?"

"I walked in," Clementine corrected. "And you have clients other than me." Her voice clipped, something like doubt melting over statement.

I coughed, "Yes. Yes, of course." We were derailing. "But I bet you could make great food."

"Therapist, I cook as good as I sing. Which, if people heard me, they would pay for me to stop. I've had years to learn it's true for both."

"It takes years," I countered, "to learn, properly learn! Especially if you have the passion for it."

"Years to get good at something I clearly suck at? Guess I'm gonna be devoid of amusement forever, then."

I resisted chucking Cadet at her. Or grabbing her antler and putting her in a headlock. "You're a thousand times more stubborn than my old friend."

"Chief Clementine bows to no will of the bossy therapy person or the Jason steel animal." Her hands on her hips, she wrinkled her face.

"I'm not bossy, and Jason is a robot," I muttered.

Clementine said, "Fascinating," and tossed a tart and caught it on her tongue.

We were skidding off course again. "May we table the palaver and have a semi-serious topic now?"

She swallowed her treat, the bulge in her throat fooling me that I heard it. "Are we going back to my drawings?"

I answered no. We would resume when she felt ready was my promise. Only when she was ready. The last time had left a heavy cloud over her shoulders, and I myself was unwilling to do that to her. This was no impromptu dentist visit to extract a bad tooth. Studying her deepest thoughts of herself was not dire.

When I made it clear, I didn't miss the unwinding of her tense muscles, the child-like relief on her face.

My fingers wandered to the pocket where I kept the pieces - the stools were long-term inconvenient, and so my sudden free time last week allowed me to bring in armchairs - and I withdrew a few by random. The man in mid shift from person to animal. The circle of rabbits. The worst kind of boogeyman for a child to see, ever. And then the likeness of Clementine, smiling to the picture's beholder, someone far taller than her for the shade that loomed over. At the level of her neck, I found thin, pronounced lines, a curve near the skin. A detail I would have studied if I missed that Clementine was looking concerned. I was not about to betray my word; for now, the drawings would be dismissed.

I put them all away, the thought of this illustrated smile left with me. All but those of the animals and this portrait delved into the darkness of the psyche. For someone who couldn't help feeling the emotions she had, it was unfair to demand otherwise. And I wasn't; I only wondered if the sun came out more than what Clementine showed. "I admire your art. But have you considered drawing something of hope?"

Clementine said, "Need to have hope to draw hope."

I said, "Your life is surely not one slate of darkest despair."

"No," she said, "but it's a blur of all the greys. A decade of service washed by because of-" she paused, seeking appropriate words. "-because we became stagnant. My usual work turned into guard duty, watching for invaders that had given up months ago. Would have gone stir-crazy if I hadn't done something with the untouched anticipation."

I would have teased her about taking up a hobby after all, using the years to become skilled at it, if we hadn't passed the time of bantering. I asked instead, "Surely your current duties do not take away your joy, do they?"

"Who says it does?" She glanced at the record player, the current song not nearly instrumental as I would have liked. Muttering an apology, I went to take off the vinyl. "The work is good, even if it's not for me." Still some self-doubts about her predecessor's choice, it seemed. "Now that these spring days have returned, the seeds are taking root. The snow is melting, we're expecting new life any day now... I can go outside without my coat. And the children," she sighed, "I've never seen any of them so lively. They're taking to being out in the sunlight. Some have taken up the sword, and the older ones are learning how to hunt for their first kill." 

If she meant to swell her chest in something akin to pride, she did not say or show so. Years of tatters and dirt darkened her snow leopard's skin, an age of violence seeped into its heather-soft fur. This rite of passage she spoke of before; elegance became her when she looked into herself as a shadow spirit and not as Chief. 

"So tradition carries on," I said, sitting again. Yes, this quiet did much better. 

She breathed an airy chuckle. "I don't see a day where we will cast aside what makes us who we are. We are hunters, every inch of ourselves. But storytellers and protectors as well. The day a spirit comes home, their first kill dragged behind themselves, is a coming of age. Wearing the kill's skin ushers in the proud days of the youth become an adult."

Then she folded her own and sat on it. A hurried action. She did this last time, too, and bit her lip shut until a single drop bled through her teeth.

I tried anyway; less direct, less tense. "How old were you when you made yours?"

"Fourteen."

"I-" My sight dropped to the tail poking out between the arm and Clementine's hip. "Oh. That's a young passage. How did you subdue that thing?" I couldn't help myself.

"My magic unlocked, and I used it to save myself. The ages for that vary, and the General apparently didn't find his until he was twenty."

"Your parents must have been so proud," I speculated.

Her eye twitched. "They were gone by then. We train a child when they or a parent expresses interest in their growth."

The shift was so sudden I missed what she said, and ran it through my head again. She kept her hands folded, staring ahead, like she was presenting a dull assignment. 

"Receiving a weapon of their choosing, they fight with teachers available through the day. Or other children." She growled, "So long as it's understood they wield not a toy."

"I-" My stammer fell flat. "I see. But children are excitable creatures. Any new thing's an adventure."

Clementine turned to me. "By that logic, waking up with an arm gone is an adventure."

I chose not to answer that. "And your parents, were they the ones to ask for your training? Or did you ask?"

"I gave myself the training," she answered, a slug's pace of speech as her fingers closed around a fruit tart. It would stay there, uneaten, destroyed to crumbles as we dug into something I wish I had dismissed, like the strange detail I thought I saw in the portrait. "I had to." 

"Your predecessor made you?"

She shook her head. "I made me."

"You needed to protect yourself?"

She nodded, only once.

"What happened to your family? Fourteen is too young to feel defenseless."

Constant went the drumming beat of the music I now realized was terribly out-of-place. Happy music, free music, worry-less music.

"Fourteen," she said, "was too old to feel real power. I wish the leopard had come at us when I was ten, or eight, or seven when I needed-" again she growled "-that beast to come." 

By now, it was dawning on me I should back off. By now, it was too late to lighten what I was hearing with a request for more of the shadow spirits' traditions, or an offer for more tea, or a playful jab to revive the six-inch smile. I wanted progress; I dug too greedily and found the vein of a core anxiety.

Too soon.

Too soon.

"They were in the ground long before this happened, Therapist," Clementine sighed, unclenching her hands. Crumbs stuck under her fingernails, her skin stained garnet.

I couldn't tear my eyes away. "Who was of the 'us' then?" I dared. 

Silent, unmoving, until this point, Jason whined and rotated between us. His emote visor was blank, even Clementine's mess gave him something to do. 

Her expression was blank, but not in the concerned manner.

Hers was of dread; of the boogeyman in the child's closet rearing over her and placing its cold, seizing, corded hands upon her shoulders, vowing in the chanted whisper to follow her all of her days. She licked her lips.

"Clementine?"

She blinked once, looked at me, and licked her lips again. "Clay."

"Clay?"

She breathed into her hands. Crumbs scattered. "My brother." And she droned details I didn't think suited importance, only seeded larger of an aching thorn in my heart. "He was six years older. Looked after me since I was four. Died the day I made my kill. He was the last of my family."

Nothing seemed right.

What could you say to something deep, so deep that the digging for it got greedy? 

Navigating these thorns was as dangerous as it was awkward.

"Bartholomew watched me drag the snow leopard home, miles and miles, by its tail." Clementine was navigating for me, speaking like simply following the program, the code, an order from her predecessor that mattered not if she disagreed with. "My magic is special. No other spirit has it. You would wish I never told you." She chuckled; weak chuckle, bitter chuckle. "He wanted me since that day. If I could kill a beast at 'so young', it could be sharpened. So yes, maybe someone did request my training. But I agreed. Because my survival depended on it. It depended on keeping up the favor of the only one who didn't abandon. Who didn't despise. Who didn't fear because Clay wasn't there anymore. I vowed to serve in his name.

"I had used to think he came down from the heavens and plucked a mortal to serve beside him. But I was putting myself right back into Hell."

We remained in silence.

Again, nothing seemed right, appropriate to say.

And Clementine had nothing left. Not even to wipe away the jelly.

Jason dared not one chirp.

So we sat there, silent, the three of us, as the seconds ticked by, until time ran out and she unfolded her leopard's skin and shrugged it on. The switch in her head flipped and a consciousness returned, the glaze melting from her eyes.

"Keep the rest of them," she waved at the fruit tarts and downed the rest of her tea. "Got plenty of raspberries at home." Patting Jason, she smiled a ghost's smile and walked out, her braid frazzled than ever, and the sound of knuckles popping filling this fogged space.

Jason bumped my foot, his emote visor relighting to a downcast eyes and a sole tear.

I sighed. "No, Jason. You did nothing wrong. You were good today." I pat his top. "But I think we both have work to do. I need to salvage this. I need to figure out..."

Trailing off, I took my seat and looked through Clementine's pictures.

The portrait...

What was it that I saw there?


	10. Charcoal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story has now been rated as Mature, and this chapter features mild language, descriptions of blood and bone, death, thoughts centered around self-hatred, and implicates self-harm. Please take care of yourselves and skip this if any of these make you uncomfortable.

The wrong day to take an emergency absence. 

The wrong day to be pushed for healing.

The day of a thousand punches to the gut, the day you can't get a break, when the world keeps spitting in your eye and hopes you die, hopes you cry until you, so close to the sun, do give up and let the dark in.

And still I shamble, blind, for one whisper of hope. 

Clementine entered in complete silence, and complete silence met her. No Jason. Out the window, a sky was threatening to storm. Her therapist sat firm, one with the arm chair. Waiting. They didn't even have the plush dog under their hands. 

Only them; one who could break, and one who could heal. 

Clementine's breath hung in the back of her throat, locked behind her red mouth. A lump of phlegm had built up in the past hour, choking her voice to croaks. Her therapist watched her, their eyes flicking between her clothes and her face. A run away did her no beauty.

"I need to talk to you," they said, faint. "Are you okay?"

"No," Clementine said, then coughed. The lump was stubbornly set. "What do you need to talk about?"

They said instead, "Where's Stabby? It's both of you I need to talk to."

Clementine shook her head. "Got here before him. He can't be here."

Her Therapist frowned. "Because there's something you haven't told him."

Clementine's clammy hands prickled cold, and a hundred tiny legs tiptoed over every inch of her, teased her scalp. 

No Jason or Cadet.

But there was a drawing.

The Therapist motioned her to sit, she backed three steps. They sighed and stalked to her, turning over the paper. "I wish I had looked at this sooner."

They had promised not to discuss the drawings right now. They had promised!

The wrong day to raise her voice at someone trying to help. How small they looked now, retreating into themselves. How disappointed they were in her.

She was trying to tell them something more important than her stupid drawings.

"And you need to stop changing the subject and tell me about this," they answered her, and shoved the paper into her hands to make her face herself.

It was her portrait. 

Simply, herself. Herself, smiling the biggest smile she could one day have, as someone stood over her. And she never had to reveal who it was.

Because the curves near the skin of her neck on one side had been drawn over, darkened, fishing for understanding of what those meant. Maybe once upon a time they had thought those were dusting lines, an effect of swiping the hand across the page.

But any sword that glinted in the light could look like irrelevant lines.

Clementine's problem suddenly felt as insignificant as a candle ember to an inferno. Or maybe the problem was the inferno. Out of control. She lost the reins, and the problems were jumping the track, diving head-first into chasms, throwing her back down the mountain where she started.

The morning hours hiding in the tree? Borrowed time.

The stains on her hands? She might have washed the blood away, but the charcoal would always be there, under her nails, between the hair-thin lines that were her fingerprints, under her cuticles. There was no where else to hide. That portrait was a piece of her future, of the very second she stepped on the line between the outside and her home, of the only destiny left for her. 

Nauseous, aching, choking, tired, she felt her stomach threaten to vomit the truth of that.

Questions pecking at her.

She barely heard them.

What could she say, the nine drawings were products of her truest self, whispers transferred from her dreams to the paper for all to see the charcoal truths of what a monster was behind this pretty face. When the muse sang to her, she drew. And too much had she lost herself in the lulling notes. In a world of fog, her hand moved often on its own.

So she knew who the looming shadow was. But not that she had betrayed their identity. 

The wind was battering a tree branch to the window - scratch, tap, rap, rap, scratch, tap - and the voices were raising, and would she please answer the damn questions, and she begged the therapist to stop yelling, she didn't know she put the swinging sword in.

Pausing, they said they weren't, and made their questions again.

The children weren't trained only for their first kill and to become stronger, were they, was the first. Not of fact, but of confirmation.

Always a proud day when a child drags home their first kill and skins it. Prouder still is the day when ritual combat is initiated, and new blood rises over the old.

By heir or by choosing or by challenge was how the power transferred to someone else. But all shadow spirits agreed; the fire raged in the heart when a challenge made blood spill.

Only a matter of when. Any day, any hour, someone would challenge her. And what would her people do? They were going to chant, "Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill!" And whoever took up they sword, they would have to obey, because that's what the people want, and a good leader puts the wishes of the people before their own.

"Does Stabby know?"

Clementine laughed. Laughter bubbled out of her stomach, tickled her system all the way up. She had her back to the door as the enemy of her private thoughts closed in, and she was laughing.

"Of course he does. He once was one of us. Pissing off the wrong enchantress was exactly how I got to meet him. Lucky, lucky, aren't I?"

Then let's talk to Stabby, they growled. Talk out the problem, as if talking would save her life. They reached out to her...

A dagger flashed.

The lavender whistled next to her ear.

The boy's bull horns were polished, sharp over his head.

Her breath vanished, the lump of phlegm bulging, choking, burning her throat as the tears burned her eyes.

He was asking if she was okay.

"No!" Ice seizing her, Clementine's hand went up. Up went both hands, and her fingers curled and the heat of power surged through her bones.

Defend. Save yourself.

The therapist's arm twisted behind their back. They shrieked in alarm.

Back, back, back three steps, turn around, kneel. The puppet obeys. And they whimpered, struggling, every useless twitch expending the energy put into Clementine's commands.

It was so easy to save herself. She was gifted this power for a reason. There was a reason it came the very moment the snow leopard came upon her, so she could live. So she could serve in her General's name. So no one would ever hurt her again. This made her safe. Why would she give this up?

Her therapist shouted, "Clementine! Stop!"

The haze broke. Clementine dropped her hands, and her therapist stumbled, cradling her arm. What have you done?

Back in the forest. Not her therapist, but the boy, barely a man, screaming his lungs out, his parents pulling him in with bloodied rags and splinters of bone stuck in their palms. Still the boy screamed, and his parents were screaming at her, unforgiving, unmerciful, digging their claws and sinking their teeth into her shoulders until she would go away, stay away.

Her therapist had been lucky. An unbroken, a whole arm.

What

Have

You

Done?

On the other side of the door, she felt incessant tapping, heard a roar of her pet name. Her hands clapped over her mouth. 

"Clementine?" The therapist pushed themselves to their feet, cradling that arm. "Please... let's talk. All of us. We can work through this together, okay?"

Shaking the head. Clamping the mouth, feeling the jawline. No. Can't help.

"Yes, we can," they insisted, closing in again. Vulture, beast, predator... didn't get it.

There was no forgetting. And sure as hell there was no forgiving. Not when terror walked among the people. When they saw their friends executed, or their sons, barely men, start to bleed out because of a cursed magic that should never have been given to a little smirking girl.

There really was a point, no matter what the storybooks said, where you can go too far. Where you are damned no matter how much of a melted heart you can claim to have.

A rabbit's paw burst through the wood in the door, aflame.

"Please, Clementine," the therapist was begging. "You're my friend. You are a daughter, a friend, a lover, and a leader. Look, Stabby's almost in now. Let's talk to him."

The whispers wouldn't go away. Broken. Obsessed. Isolated. Feral. Worthless. No repair possible for a soul like hers. 

Once Stabby saw that, there was no way in any shape of Hell he would want to try anymore.

Clay hadn't. Mother and Father hadn't.

I didn't.

I was so tired of trying.

I wanted to go to sleep.

Dropping my hands, I whispered, "Don't tell Stabby. Please don't bother Stabby." And I ran. To anywhere but here, I wouldn't stop running.

Right at my heels, Father was shouting. I choked back my tears, actually got that chunk of phlegm up and out of my throat and spat it out and kept running.

"Clemey, wait! Clemey!"

I'm sorry. 

I'm sorry.

I am sorry.

And that will never be enough.

X X X

Stabby was gone. He went after her the second he saw the red-rimmed eyes and how close she was to fainting.

No time to demand what I had done to her. No time except what he had left to save her.

If he could find her.

I hugged my knees. Crumpled with the imprint of a boot, that damned drawing waited for me. A cloudless sun splashed over a smiling face that was more and more becoming a destiny.


	11. Enough

The circle was closed around her. At the first peek of her head outside, two had been at her heels, exiting the caves - coincidental followers going the same way she was. Then, as she'd gone about her tasks, six were behind. Then twelve. More and more, spirits flocking like tacky flotsam to a boat's rudder until they united, having herded their sheep to the slaughter grounds. Only one other was let in. One to enter, none to leave, not until the enmity was put to the ground. 

So it comes time to fulfill this "only destiny left". Are you not happy? Is this not what you wanted, to save your loves the pain of knowing you?

Oh. Or do you get it now? That this is not the stained glass window of a fate's dream? Not quite how you pictured fate shaping its serpentine coils, tightening, as your own people do now.

A tight hug to herself was Clementine's response. These woods were the last to be touched by the seasons; a last, spiteful breath was wheezed on these shivering souls, and sickly husks that once were trees reached to an endless ocean of clouds. A sea of bodies rustled below.

The boy looked miserable. His name was Aegis, and he survived Clementine's devil magic, as what her own people called it - still the flashes of red gush and white splinter pulsed at her head - so who better to elect for delivering an uprising? His own magic discovered before a week's end, he was up and able, the arm he lost replaced by a mass of vines. Corded and stiff were they, and wreathed in thorns. None of this filled the hollow grunt of his challenge for the position of Chief. 

She would die.

She would die, and all these people would genuflect under the banner of a boy, barely a man, a kid they shoved into the role because why not seize a frayed chance of ridding the world of Leopard Bitch, the terror of the forest? 

Not true. Not all of it.

There were some who wouldn't rejoice.

She clutched the spearhead hanging from her neck.

Silence the voices. Fight. Prove who you are.

She consented the challenge.

The boy struck first, spurred, and slashed like a wasp. His dagger, his stinger, it sliced a line across her cheek, thin and red. Appropriately, her scars stung, a new scratch over the three flaking gashes of old. The people screamed. More blood, more, more, more.

Another strike at her, blocked. Response, her kukri was brought down on his plant arm. Green and transparent guts sprayed her unharmed cheek, and the second she pulled away the wound laced itself whole.

Kukri, a single throwing knife, leather armor that matched Aegis', and her own self, magicless; this was all she had. That, and her own will that skidded down the sand hills from every shriek, every insulting name spat in her ear, and climbed itself back to level from thought of her loves, of Stabby, of Faye, of kids she wanted in an unburdened other life to hold close so they may sleep to her steady heartbeat. She could not withdraw. And she refused to have her magic in the ring - no more accidents. No more pulverizing kids' limbs and stirring the wasps' nest. For honor, the challenge had to be completed her way; live or die. 

They danced around each other. Around and around, endless dance of the dragonflies went on. Slice, jab, block, dodge. The watchers' cries came to a constant roar, an ocean of noise. So much hope placed in the boy, yet they didn't want to know his misery; it was all he had. His people did plenty of the believing for him.

And Clementine was fighting a thousand of her demons. When Aegis pushed off a tree, part of the challenge borders, and shoved her up to the ring of people, the knives came out. Needle teeth dug into the back of her ribs. She swallowed her yelp. Hissing laughs met her defensive swing, expected, ducked from.

And when a distraction worth using her knife showed itself, when Aegis, indeed distracted, was shoved into the crowd, they shoved back. No knives, of course, and no trickery. He tripped at her feet.

Two of the many hateful faces leered at her: guardians of such a youth, deciding his fate for him. Their fingers at their throats and a spit to the ground, they hissed a chant anew.

"Kill... kill... kill..."

It spread, and all spirits who cared to see, who believed in "Down with the Chief", joined, slow but sure as the crawl of clouds over the sun.

"Kill... kill... kill... kill..."

Exactly as she had predicted. And so easy was it, Clementine doubted the Therapist hadn't seen it coming themselves. She tried to warn them. This is what happens to the scorpion among the foxes. Especially - especially - when they try to be anything else, any other thing.

Aegis sobbed, and whirled at her. His jabs came at a flurry, jumping around her, shredding her skin by the pinprick dagger point, and each preceded a breathy gasp forged into a sorry, regret that she could have accepted as lies. He was as cowardly as her, given - forced upon him - a good reason to be afraid. 

"Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! went his people. Some climbed over one another, crushing, trampling, to get a look at the tyrant. And the next strike that Clementine raised her kukri over her head to block seared her weakened, dribbling, scratched arm, like someone grabbed and plunged it into lemon juice. The weapon dropped to the place of uselessness.

One of those two cackled, above the roar. "She's dropped it! Finish her, finish the hell-spawn!"

Trembling, Aegis reared his foot back, aiming for the kukri.

"Obey!" shrieked the other. "Obey your people! End her!"

He, his hands over his ears and trembling only more, stepped over the weapon.

His shadow cast over Clementine. 

Clementine shut her welling eyes, her extremities one with the frosty ground. These claws loved to dig themselves into her shoulders, champ in her ears, close their sharpest points over her neck. How would this, one little knife to the heart, be any more agonizing?

It's what she wanted. It was her dream, it's why the she in the picture had been elated, even as the sword came at her neck, all cards put to Die. 

So where is your six-inch smile?

Where is the joy to finally sleep?

The despair spilled over her shoulders, curled around her agonized ribs, her wrists, and seeped through her many wounds and became her.

Bartholomew had sent her to her death. Pass on the crown to one whom he knew would be challenged through an uprising. It was only a matter of time, and that sweet, knowing smile must have been his last expression before the grave. Syrupy lies his last words, and his last trace, the bunny that fled the moment the first cry for bloodshed erupted over the ring.

Clementine could not blame him. She would have run, too, were the roles reversed. Were she not frozen.

She wanted to live. 

But this world wants her out.

Her pores wept, and her eyes wept, and she kept them shut tight. 

"K-kid!"

Clementine's eyes shot open, and, Aegis dithering, swiped his feet from under him, dashing for her kukri.

Stabby.

Father.

Dad.

She turned, and a dagger strike glanced off the metal.

Where was he?

No, didn't matter. But she did, to him. She swiped her forearm across her face, picturing him right now in the trees or hiding in the bushes, inconspicuous rabbit urging her to try harder than that. To be more than that. More than worm food.

"Not... today," she wheezed, and, within a struggle of the blades, threw herself forward. The dagger whizzed from Aegis' hand. And Clementine grabbed his vine arm and did the same as she did the knife, threw him away, barreling him right into the tree, a face-first crash putting him off his feet for good.

Mercy, tandem forgiveness followed. These challenges could be fought to the death - and traditionally that result was favored - but enough of that.

Enough.

x X x

Her next therapy appointment was two days later. Too many yelling matches right after Aegis conceded. And Faye and Stabby did what they could to ease off the aches from both her and the boy's bones. And their souls.

To be perfectly honest, she told herself, she was looking forward to therapy.

The door to the office was open. The therapist - her therapist - was pacing a ring into the carpet, and the Jason scurried behind them, beeping as constant as the ticking clock. Their hair had been combed, but hardly an adequate amount, and tucked around their own ribs their hands wrinkled their wooly white sweater.

How funny that Clementine missed white.

It was their peafowl's curtain of a tail, or a phoenix's rise of golden wings.

Clementine tapped the door and they whirled on her. Something of surprise appeared, and switched right away to shudders and upturned brows.

They tried to apologize. Clementine tried, too. Lapping over each other, the words weren't helped by the Jason, who was ramming the shadow spirit's foot, all squeals and whistles. Pointless, they fast realized. They were here. They were safe.

And, her therapist promised, a decision.

Clementine's problems weren't going anywhere. The most perfect world would involve coming here to be fixed. Words didn't work like that, fixing things at a snap. So... the very next best thing.

There was all the time she could want, once a week, like chipping at a wall with a pickaxe, to talk away the hurt. One week at a time, one shard at a time. One day the wall would crumble to dust, and let this sunlight freely touch her face again.

Clementine liked the sound of taking it slow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so comes the "mid-season" finale to this story - a fitting halfway point to Clementine's personal journey. In truth, I need a break from the weekly writing so I can gather in new ideas. Also so another project that needs my attention can be written; I really can't do both of these at once. In the meantime, Clementine's weekly sessions are going to be all small talk and discussing every day life sessions, stuff that doesn't really add enough to be necessarily "on-screen", and can cover the months that this will be on break.
> 
> Clementine and the Therapist will return...


End file.
